Although each unit is important, more effort and attention is payed to winning an entire war, not just the battle. In contrast, Battlezone's world is smaller and each unit is more vital loosing one tank can mean the difference between success and failure.
Taking a tank into enemy territory and seeing a squad of 25 attack choppers coming over the ridge at you is quite cool. On the one hand no other game I have played does as good a job at making me feel part of a huge war, with what seems like thousands of units locked in the trenches ready for battle. The scope of the war is both a strength of this game and a weakness. Making the war personal is not only a lot of fun, but necessary as each unit in the squad you join is given an armor and weapons boost, and the unit you occupy is doubly fortified. As the Host Station commander you have the ability to take command of any vehicle that is part of the Resistance. You can choose to fight the war from multiple perspectives and with a wide range of strategies. Although the human factions look similar in some aspects, for the most part the units are distinct in look, feel, and capabilities. The differences between these units and the races in general is astonishing. With so little of humanity left, the need to survive has made cyborg implants a necessary evil, and those still alive have been made one with machine.Įach race has more than fifteen units capable of waging war in the air and on the ground. Unable to unify, the human contingency is broken up into warring factions, hell bent on destroying one another for the blunders made leading up to the "Big Mistake." Because the oceans and atmosphere have all but been destroyed, habitation has evolved under force field domes.
Two alien races, wanting to consume, harvest, and use the Earth for their own purposes, have taken the opportunity when humanity is at its weakest to attack. The game begins a few years after the "Big Mistake," or more accurately, worldwide nuclear holocaust. The Adrenaline Vault's detailed review says it all: "The game's recipe looks a little like this: one part ID4, a teaspoon of Starship Troopers, throw in a pinch of the Borg, mix it all up with a heavy dose of the X-Files, and then bake for a millenium at 10,000 degrees.
Urban Assault is a superb and highly underrated blend of real-time strategy and first-person shooter genres - much like Uprising but with significant differences, particularly in strategic options.